Use OneDrive with Office

You can quickly open and save OneDrive documents right from your Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. If you also have the OneDrive desktop app installed on your PC (some editions of Office come with the OneDrive desktop app), OneDrive and Office work together to sync documents and let you work with other people on shared documents at the same time.

To save Office documents to OneDrive:

Sign in to OneDrive when you install Office, or right from any Office app. Tap or click Sign in in the upper-right corner of the app, and then enter your Microsoft account email address and password.

Open the document you want to save to OneDrive, tap or click File > Save As, choose your OneDrive, and then choose the folder where you want to save the file.

Windows 10, Windows 7, or Windows Vista

To optimize OneDrive for use with Office, verify that the "Use Office..." option is selected in OneDrive settings.

Right-click the OneDrive cloud icon in the notification area, at the far right of the taskbar.

(You might need to click the Show hidden icons arrow next to the notification area to see the OneDrive icon.)

Click Settings > Office, and then select the Use Office to work on files with other people at the same time check box.

(In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, the check box says Use Office to sync files faster and work on files with other people at the same time.)

Note: If you turn off the Use Office to work on files with other people at the same time setting, any changes that you and other people make to Office files will no longer merge together automatically.

Windows 8.1

To see if you have the OneDrive desktop app installed on your PC, follow these steps:

On the Start screen, enter Programs and tap or click Programs and features.

In the list of installed programs, look for MicrosoftOneDrive. If you find it, it means the desktop app is installed on your PC.

In Windows 8.1, you can install the OneDrive desktop app and turn on a setting that lets you use Office to work on OneDrive documents with other people at the same time. Because OneDrive is built in to Windows 8.1, no other desktop app features will be installed. Download the free desktop app.